The first ten chapters of Jane Eyre are NOT skimmable

PopMatters interviews Jack Murnighan and writes about his book Beowulf on the Beach. What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits.

Emily Bronte, on the other hand, is a “bushfire waiting to blaze”. And by the way, don’t feel bad about skipping the first few acts of [missing in the original text!] , they’re kind of irrelevant. And the first ten chapters of Jane Eyre are skimmable. (Rachel Balik)

We couldn't disagree more with that statement about Jane Eyre. Those first ten chapters shape Jane Eyre, and by skipping them you would miss one of the greatest character developments in literature (in our humble opinion, anyway). Adaptations already cut them short so, if you read the book, do read its beginning too.

It looks like writer Reggie Nadelson didn't skip those chapters, as seen in an interview with her in The Independent:

Which fictional character most resembles you?
For me and for ten million girls growing up, it was Jane Eyre . Now, I think it might be Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It or a character from a Woody Allen film. (Arifa Akbar)

SchoolGate - a blog hosted by The Times - looks into modern governesses:

It sounds strange, because the concept of a governess seems so dated - Jane Eyre was one, after all, and that was in the mid 19th century. (Sarah Ebner)

The Globe and Mail reviews the film Inkheart, based on Cornelia Funke's homonymous novel.

Writers and filmmakers have long relished the fantasy of physically entering works of art. [...]
Jasper Fforde has made a career of writing novels about Thursday E. Next, a detective who enters Jane Eyre and Hamlet to stop people from kidnapping the heroes or scrambling the plots. (Warren Clements)

And another film mention comes from the Boston Herald, in a review of the new film The Proposal:

Directed by Anne Fletcher (“27 Dresses,” “Step Up”) and scripted by newcomer Pete Chiarelli, “The Proposal” drops such literary names as Don DeLillo and “Wuthering Heights” to establish its literary cred. (James Verniere)

Apparently Sandra Bullock's character reads Wuthering Heights each Christmas. Such a Christmas-y book, indeed.

And we just don't know what we are going to do with these historians who WON'T check their sources or whatever it is they are doing wrong. From The Herald-Mail:

Historian John H. Nelson will present a lecture titled "Laudanum - A History" at the Washington County Rural Heritage Museum Friday, June 26, at 7 p.m. The free lecture consists of a history of Laudanum, from its origins to how it affected famous writers such as Elizabeth Browning, Samuel Coleridge, Emily Bronte and Sir Walter Scott. (Harry Nogle)

Clearly Emily Brontë, who famously refused any kind of medicine and treatement during her last illness, was NOT affected by laudanum. It was a Brontë, yes, but it was her brother Branwell. What these historians seem to be having trouble grasping is that fact that there are several Brontës. It looks as if they glimpsed 'Brontë' somewhere and glued it to the first name they identify it with.

Brontës.nl has two interesting alerts for Dutch an Belgian readers. NCRV (on Nederland 2) airs Jane Eyre 2006, starting next Monday. There's an article by Patrick Bremmers about the production and Charlotte Brontë's novel on NCRV-Gids. The other alert concerns the upcoming Theater Artemis production of Wuthering Heights (Woeste Hooegten) which premieres next October 20 in Den Bosch. Now the complete tour (October 2008- February 2010) has been announced including performances in Haarlem, Rotterdam, Brussels, Kortrijk, Schoten, Turnhout, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Brugge, Utrecht, Tilburg, Gouda, Breda, Almere, Zwolle, Groningen, Heerlen, Mol, Leiden, Dordrecht, Den Haag, Arnhem and Hengelo.

Finally, the Asheville Citizen-Times has another alert for next August. Auditions for a local production of Jane Eyre. The Musical:

Auditions for “Jane Eyre: The Musical,” at HART, 250 Pigeon St., Waynesville, are 6:30 p.m. Aug. 9-10. Show opens Oct. 2. Those interested in off-stage production are also asked to stop by during this time. 456-6322.

Blogs: Jules' Book Reviews gives Wuthering Heights a 4/10. Romance Cafe writes about Jane Eyre. And Genny's Art Space posts a lovely drawing of Jane Eyre.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Theatre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights